The present invention relates to e-Commerce and more particularly to attaching objects to electronic messages distributed over a network.
Electronic mail, or xe2x80x9ce-mailxe2x80x9d, has become a popular way for people to communicate using networks of various types such as the Internet. Using e-mail, a person can send messages and other information as attachments electronically to other e-mail users. Such attachments normally include pictures, sound recordings, formatted documents, etc. that are in digital form, and which are executable independent of the opening and reading of the message included with the e-mail.
When using e-mail to communicate, a user will typically create a message using an e-mail program running on a computer that is or can be connected by a network to other computers. The message will include the e-mail address of the intended recipient along with the message and/or attachment. When the user has finished entering the message, the user will xe2x80x9csendxe2x80x9d the message and/or attachment to the intended recipient. The recipient, also using an e-mail program running on a computer connected to the computer network, can then read the received message and/or attachment.
In the case where the e-mail includes a personalized message from a known person, a recipient is very likely to open and view the message and any attachments. If such attachment is of particular interest, the recipient tends to send such attachment to others who, in turn, do the same. As a result, the attachment may be propagated over the network in a geometric manner, thus incurring widespread exposure.
The recent explosion in the popularity of the Internet has provided tremendous potential for marketing goods and services. However, for most small to mid-sized companies, advertising their wares and services through a web-site on the Internet has not proven to be very effective. One of the difficulties with advertising on the Internet is directing consumers to visit a particular web-site. The overabundance of web-site locations has created an information overload for many consumers.
E-mail is one possible solution for advertisers. Despite its allure, however, promotional e-mail is still frowned upon, and at present its content is generally limited to unformatted text without graphics which is often not personalized. Accordingly, promotional e-mail is often disregarded, and in almost all cases, is not propagated by the recipients themselves.
There is thus a need to harness the phenomenon of geometric propagation of certain attachments and personalized messages in a manner to solve the foregoing problems.
The present invention includes a system, method, and article of manufacture for communicating via an application program included as a payload of an electronic message. At least one application program of the payload is initialized after an electronic message is selected by a user. After initialization, the application program is executed. The execution of the application program includes displaying text included with the electronic message, and running a code segment including as a parameter at least a portion of the text included with the electronic message. As an option, the code segment may be run automatically in response to the electronic message being selected and opened.
In one aspect of the present invention, the application program may be executed on a network browser. Further, the electronic message may be selected on an electronic mail browser. As an option, the code segment may replace a selected string of the text of the electronic message with a graphic which, in one embodiment, may include a trademark or the like. As an option, the selection of the graphic may initiate a link to a site on the network. Further, the code segment may link a string of the text of the electronic message with a site on the network.
As such, the personal text of the electronic message may induce the user to open the mail while the functionality may serve as an inducement to send the electronic message to another user. This in turn may be used to incur visits to a particular site on the network. In the alternative, it may serve to afford widespread exposure of advertisements or any other feature that supports e-Commerce.